Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals

Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity.

As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin to wind down operations Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages, until May 16.

“We’ve long admired Perplexity and believe great things happen when the world’s knowledge is made more open and accessible,” reads a post on Read.cv’s blog. “In that spirit, we are thrilled to be joining the design and engineering team at Perplexity to continue in our shared mission of exploration and discovery.”

A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch via email, but provided no additional details.

“We’re excited to have the Read.cv team join Perplexity,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote in a post on X. “The team is incredibly capable in designing and building consumer and social experiences and we look forward to working with them on many new exciting directions!”

Read.cv, which was founded in 2021 by Andy Chung, previously a product designer at Facebook, Mozilla, and Salesforce-owned Quip, offered a range of tools that let users share their resumes and chat with other professionals in their industries. Read.cv also offered capabilities aimed at organizations, like team profiles and the ability to post job listings and perform candidate searches.

More recently, Read.cv launched Sites, a feature that allowed users to publish a personal website using their Read.cv profile. Users could even obtain a “.cv” domain from Read.cv and connect it to their profile, if they wanted.

Read.cv says it plans to migrate “.cv” domains starting January 31 to its partners at Hello.cv, where users will be able to continue managing them.

Perplexity’s plans for West Berkeley-based Read.cv, which had around three employees and was backed by funding from F7 Ventures and Fanjul Capital, aren’t clear. But Perplexity has increasingly invested in corporate-focused functionality, last summer launching an enterprise plan with user management, “internal knowledge search,” and more.

The moves could be in part at the behest of the VCs backing Perplexity, who are no doubt eager to see a return sooner than later. Perplexity has reportedly raised over $500 million in capital from investors including Institutional Venture Partners, and is said to be valued at $9 billion.

Read.cv is Perplexity’s third acquisition following its purchase of Carbon, which specializes in connecting AI systems to external data sources. In 2023, Perplexity acquired Spellwise, whose CEO was brought on to develop Perplexity’s mobile app.